


O' Death, How you're treating me

by natcat5



Series: Dark Month 2015 [27]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Ultimates, Spider-Man (Ultimateverse)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Death, Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-29 07:10:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5119622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natcat5/pseuds/natcat5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Gwen died, it was nothingness. An eternity of non-existence. A void.<br/>So why is Peter back as a ghost?</p>
            </blockquote>





	O' Death, How you're treating me

 “It was different, for me,” she says, quiet. Her voice is shaky, a little raspy. Her throat and mouth both feel dry, parched. She feels bone weary, throughout the entirety of her body, and no matter how much her eyes sting with unshed tears, they refuse to fall.

And he stays there, just at the corner of her vision. Spidersuit torn and bloodstained, smoke-damaged and burnt. His hair is a disheveled mess, sticky with blood at the temple. The same as when he died.

“I didn’t get this,” Gwen said, and she doesn’t know if she’s speaking defensively, jealously, or with pity. “I didn’t get this at all. It was just…For me it was just nothing.”

People had asked her time and time again if it had been like falling asleep. Every time, she’d glared, or remained stubbornly silent, or told them no, and left it at that.

She wishes it had been like falling asleep. She wishes that she had been awake one moment, walking home, and then asleep. Or even awake, a brief second of utter terror, and then a spiral down into darkness, and then asleep. And then woken up later in the SHIELD facility, like it had all been a nap. Nothing more to it. Death was just the deepest sleep of all.

She wishes that it had been like that for her.

But death was not like falling asleep. Not in the slightest bit. It was an indescribable, terrible, _nothingness._ A lack of existence and presence that was as all-consuming as it was indescribable. There is nothing she can say, no way to convey what it felt like to not exist at all. She’s chilled by it. Haunted.

That is what death is to her. That is what she got when she died.

But here he is, hovering in the corner of her eye. At the edge of her vision. Peter Parker, dead. Looking the same as he did when Gwen saw him breathe his last. When his eyes closed for the last time. The air around him even smells the same. Burning wood and burning flesh and copper. The barely there scent of his favourite shampoo. The one Gwen had started using, before she’d had to stop. Couldn’t take Aunt May’s head jerking upwards everytime she caught a smell of it.

Gwen didn’t get to be a ghost when she died, and she doesn’t know whether her infinite blackness, her endless purgatory of non-existence, was worse or better than the shade she can see. The pale reflection that’s visible only to her.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says, and Gwen’s immediately mad. Immediately angry. What’s he apologizing for, getting to be a ghost when she didn’t? What’s he apologizing for, still existing? What’s he apologizing for, that she’s the only one who can see him, and she looks like crazier than normal, talking to herself? Is he apologizing for being back? Is he apologizing for leaving in the first place??

He’s dead. He’s dead he’s dead and now he’s haunting her. She’s the only one who can see him because she was dead too. But her death was different. It was different and she thinks this might be worse than it was. For her, or for him, or both.

“You could not be real,” she says boldly, “I could be imagining you.”

She can’t ever look at him directly. It’s always in a shade, a reflection, a shadow. Never in front, always off to the side and a little behind. But she can smell the air and know he’s there and feel the weight and presence of him at her shoulder. All of that, and she can’t see his face dead on. Can’t see his eyes. Those stupid, huge brown eyes. Are they sad? Are they regretful? There are always questions that people have for the dead, and they’re meant to be asked to silent, unanswering gravestones. Asking him if he laments his existence, if he regrets the way he died, seems a cruel thing to do.

She wishes she could see his face. His eyes. She wishes she could embrace him, hold him one last time.

She extends her arm outwards, purposefully not looking at the path it’s taking. She doesn’t feel it make contact, doesn’t feel it touch anything, but she hears Peter exhale softly, a quiet sigh, and her chest begins to ache.

“This isn’t fair,” she hisses, those stubborn tears hovering just on the edge of her eyes, “Why is this happening? Shouldn’t you be resting in peace? In fucking Valhalla or something? Why are you here like this?”

Because maybe Gwen got purgatory but there’s no way that Peter got anything but the pearly gates. Or the halls of champions. Any place where fallen heroes get to feast and party and be celebrated for eternity. It’s not that she’s ungrateful for the chance to see him again, to hear his voice, however partially, but this feels like a form of torture. And he doesn’t deserve that. Peter Parker doesn't fucking deserve that. This is unmitigated bullshit, and she’s _pissed._ She’s pissed in the place of despair.

“It’s not…” Gwen swallows, forcing down her anger, her sorrow, her frustration. She allows her eyes to shift sideways, to catch the faded figure of red and blue in her gaze. She still can’t see his face clearly enough to see an expression, but she feels him watching her.

“It’s not, like, an unfinished business thing, is it?” she demands, “Because if there’s some bullshit here on earth keeping you, I’ll take care of it, I swear I will, just tell me what and I’ll…”

She trails off. Her cheeks are damp at last. Why does everything suddenly feel so hopeless?

“It’s not that,” Peter says, his voice quieter than she remembers. She doesn’t remember him ever being silent for such a long stretch, actually. “It’s not that. I’m sorry. I just wanted to see you all one last time.”

Gwen’s breath stops in her chest, a rattling sob at the base of her throat. She closes her eyes and inhales sharply through her nose.

“I didn’t know you’d be able to see me too,” he continues, still uncharacteristically quiet, “So I’m sorry.”

It’s not anything so terrible as being trapped on the mortal plane after all. It’s Peter wanting to have a peaceful goodbye, not one in the shadow of a destroyed house, with the burning corpse of his archenemy a few metres away, and his blood staining the grass of his lawn. And Gwen just had to ruin it by being able to see him and making things awkward.

She starts to cry in earnest then, and she hears him make a concerned, unhappy sound behind her.

“Please don’t be upset,” he says, “And I didn’t think I’d be able to talk to you, but since I can let me just- it’s okay, Gwen. It’s alright. I don’t think what you got before was death, not really. And that’s why you could come back. I swear it’ll be okay. I’m going to be okay, and you are too.”

Gwen presses her hand to her mouth, trying to hold herself in, trying to stop herself from spilling her heart onto the sidewalk. People are stopping, are staring. She wishes she had the energy to flip them off.

“It’ll be okay, Gwen,” Peter repeats, and she forces herself to breathe. Hearing him say her name is a gut wrenching blow, but she pushes past it.

“I got it, thank you,” she says, earnest, still crying, “Now get out of here, Parker. Get to that afterlife you deserve.”

She might be imagining it, but she think that, in that vague, fuzzy corner of her vision, she sees his face, for just a second. She sees him smile.

And then he’s gone.

**Author's Note:**

> I am terrible at time management and also very tired.


End file.
